Religion
by Tommy
The closest religion I’d associate my beliefs to would be atheism, but I manage to go about my daily business without dwelling on it too much. Why spend all of this life worrying about getting into the next one? There’s only now, as they say.
If I was religious, I’d imagine it’d probably go along with the rest of my life: being independent. I don’t like being “Tommy Collison, student of XYZ school”, I just like being a stand-alone figure. If I were, say, Catholic, the recent abuses, while horrific, wouldn’t turn me away from being a member of that faith. As far as I’m concerned, my belief is between me and a god – no in-betweens.
Religion didn’t play a huge part in my upbringing. My mother considered herself Catholic, but wouldn’t have regularly gone to mass. She did pray on occasion, the last time I recall was when I was having surgery. Dad, on the other side of the coin, wasn’t particular religious.
Mom, I think, tried to raise Catholic children but Patrick nor John ever showed any great interest in it, from my point of view. Following their example, I was never overly enthusiastic about it and the handful of times I was brought to mass during my childhood were usually spent daydreaming on what I could be doing at home or playing games with myself – calculating how many months I’d been alive, and so on. After a while, Mom gave into our lack of enthusiasm and we stopped that particular Sunday morning tradition. Over the next couple of years, my time spent in churches was limited to weddings, funerals and the sporadic visit on Christmas morning (and that last one is a tradition that died out a few years ago).
I did, however, make my communion and confirmation.
Around the time of my communion, when I was 7 or 8, I wasn’t nearly as headstrong as I was today, and I was quite self-conscious of myself. I considered myself uncertain as to where I stood on the grounds of religion, but I learned toward non-believing, even then. However, that dire need to fit in ruled all, so I joined in the mumbled morning prayer and blessed myself just like everybody else. The unreligious part of me scorned at this yearning to fit in, where I’d do these rituals which I didn’t really believe in. I got my answer as to what to do when reading our primary school Religion book, where it said that it wasn’t the hand movements that made blessing yourself sacred, it was the thought and the faith behind them. I had my answer. It didn’t matter that I did the movements along with everybody else, I reasoned with myself, if I didn’t believe in them.
So when our communion was coming up, and everyone else was preparing their pretty dresses and suits, I got right in there and picked out something nice to wear too. When they started learning off prayers and hymns, I joined in, feverishly learning off the lines because that’s what the other kids were doing. Also, and I won’t try and sugar coat this as I write it, about 8 years on, I enjoyed the notion of having a ‘me day’, when all my cousins and my godmother would come around and there’d be one of the Collison Get-Togethers. These events, which would only happen once a year, saw some or all of the 6 siblings on my Dad’s side and 6 siblings on my Mom’s side come together in one location, and a fantastic day would ensue. A lot of these still stick out in my memory for the sheer enjoyment I got out of them.
I also made my confirmation, when I was 13. By this age, any doubts about my religious orientation were gone and I approached this knowing fully that any reason I had for doing it (‘receiving the sacrament’ is the proper word, I believe) were wholly non-religious. I knew Mom loved the Collison Get-Togethers as much as I did – and this was as good an opportunity as any.
I also saw it as something slightly more significant than that – I’d set it in my mental calendar as ‘the day’. The day that was going to tell me what I felt. If there was a Catholic god, he would see my uncertainty and do something to prove himself – ‘touch me down inside’, to use a cliché.
I’ll admit, then, that as I sat in the front pew (nothing to do with faith – we were arranged in alphabetical order, and Collison was the third name) of the church that chilly morning, I felt a nervous excitement. The kind of excitement you feel when you know you’re about to meet your hero or something. Was something gonna happen? I felt my knees shaking as I stood up and approached the bishop. He anointed me, and I sat down.
To this day, I can’t look at a balloon deflating slowly without being reminded of my confirmation; that sense of shrinking as I sat in my seat. My hero hadn’t appeared out of the stage door.
There was also a grim sense of satisfaction there too – as if some part of me was saying: ‘well Tommy, there’s your answer’.
To this day, I don’t shy away from churches. I think they have pretty architecture and many of them smell nice, but the theological aspect of them is lost on me. If there’s a wedding or a funeral on I won’t make a point of not going to the church just because I’m not Catholic, and I think that stems from my realization that it’s not the participation that means anything – you need to want this, and have faith in it. I do get a sense of being lost though, having forgotten all the songs and prayers and gesticulations. Do I join in the mumbled praying or the hollow singing? Do I kneel when they do, or go up for communion when they do?
So, there you have it, the history of religion and me. At roughly 1100 words, it’s my longest Trust Tommy post to date. Now to add in some pictures. Be sure to leave any comments, both negative and positive, below: